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In the first instance, I would recommend you stretch the data as hard as it will take it. If you don't try this, then you will not know what its capable of (a baseline). This does not necessarily mean a hard stretched image will be the end result every time as aesthetics come in to play. For example, with strong data you are likely to be able to stretch it hard to bring out the fainter features of a galaxy's edge (some very cool stellar tidal streams or integrated flux should they exist), but features in the nucleus will burn out/clip. Restoring the burnt out features isn't a major issue, but you may end up struggling to keep the brightness and contrast relative to the edge of the galaxy, hence losing the aesthetics i.e a mono tone feel lacking depth. Based on this don't over do it and use the combing as one of the thresholds to gauge what can be achieved with the data. In some cases, such as LRGB processing, a heavily stretched luminance is going to wash out all colour so it will simply be not possible to take it to its limits if you can't match it with the chrominance data.
Its easy to get too tricky when processing, often resulting in a small gain. Providing you don't clip data, you can manipulate it as you please between the black and white points. Indeed, capturing data becomes routine, its what you do with it that counts!
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